Samantha & Rafael were the teachers here before us. We spent 2 short weeks together learning our way around Takikawa and the ins & outs of the job.

Sam & Raf left for Vancouver on November 25th:
Hey peeps!
How are things? Is everything OK, are you guys still confident about everything now that Sam and I are gone?
Just taking the initiative here and writing to let you know that our flight went OK, and that even though it was long we had a good time because the service was so good! …

One of our classes every week is at the Takikawa Kindergarden. We play with the kids in the morning and “try” to teach them English in the afternoon. They are the most adorable things ever but it can be quite exhausting at times. The kindergarden is right beside a temple run by the Izumi family. The Izumi family are our students as well as our guarantor.
We teach at the kindergarden (It’s called “youchien” in Japanese) every Friday. Here’s a video clip from our first day, the whole school gathered together …

Takikawa is expecting a colder winter this year

Well- we made it!
After more than 6 months of planning, freaking, packing and stressing, we finally made it to Japan! (On top of that, we flew business class from Taiwan to Japan… in case you are wondering)
If we’ve kept you horribly out of the loop, we are living in a quaint little town of 45,000 people called Takikawa, on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It’s 45 minutes away from Sapporo by driving. We are here to teach English to a group of students of all ages. It’s a private …